Apple's faith-based security fails again

A German government watchdog has just worked out that the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch have ‘critical weaknesses’ that could be exploited by criminals.

Apple saves money by not having to provide virus checking software or worrying too much about security. It has marketed this clever plan through its legions of fanboys who claim that they are safe from hackers because they have never been hacked before.

However, the Germans are particularly concerned about the iPhone, which is a little more popular and begging to be attacked.

The Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (federal office for information security) warned that Clicking on an infected PDF file “is sufficient to infect the mobile device with malware without the user’s knowledge” on several versions of Apple’s iOS operating system.

The problem may occur on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, iPad 2 and the iPod Touch with software versions including iOS 4.3.3, and it “cannot be excluded” that other iOS versions, including the iOS 5 due in September, the men from the Ministry said.

All it would take was a person opening a website that carries an infected PDF file. Cyber criminals could spy on passwords, planners, photos, text messages, emails, or listen to the fanboys’ Coldplay collection. It would be possible to hack phone conversations.

The weak points in the programming allow attackers to gain administrator rights and get access to the entire system.

Apple has not yet issued a fix for the problem and a spokesperson for Apple Germany told the Associated Press that it was aware of the warning. No indication if it was going to do anything about it.